DECISION POINT: Early in a Tournament where blinds are 25/50 and the action folds to the Hijack who open limps. You raise to 225 from the Cutoff with pocket queens, the Button and Blinds fold, and the Hijack calls. The flop comes 4♣Q♦A♠ and Hijack leads into you for 262. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in the very early stages of a multi-table tournament where everyone starts with 7,500 chips and the blinds are 25/50 with no ante. Since we are just starting the event we have no significant reads on the players at our table. We are dealt Q♣Q♥ in the Cutoff seat and everyone folds to the Hijack who open limps.

Pocket queens is far too strong of a hand to allow multiple players to see the flop cheaply and we want to push our equity edge over both the Hijack’s wide range and the hand ranges of the remaining players to our left with a raise. We make a pot sized raise to 225 vs this late position limping range and it folds around to the Hijack who calls.

It is not uncommon in the early stages of tournaments for there to be a number of players at tables who just want to “see a flop” with a wide variety of hands. This likely means that the Hijack’s range of hands is quite capped (would they really limp in with AA/KK?) and likely consists of hands such as small pairs, suited connectors, and Ax suited. Some opponents may even limp with a wider range in this spot and include hands like offsuit Ax, offsuit broadways, and offsuit connectors in this range as well.

The flop is 4♣Q♦A♠ and we flop middle set. Much to our surprise, the Hijack leads out into the flop for half pot or 262 in chips. A big key to putting yourself in position to make deep runs in tournaments is focusing on how to win the most with your big hands when you have the opportunity. We’ve flopped a huge hand here in position with deep stacks and our opponent is leading into us, so it’s crucial to evaluate all our options to maximize value in the hand.

Many players would be tempted to slowplay in this position, however if we do decide to slowplay here it can be incredibly tough to win a big pot because of the deep effective stacks. In this situation, just calling here leaves ~1,000 chips in the pot with ~7,000 chip stacks behind and two streets to go.

With such a big hand in this spot we have to raise the Hijack’s flop lead to have any hope of getting stacks all-in by the river using standard bet-sizing on each street. Even a small raise here to inflate the pot a little bit will make the turn and river bets that much larger, as most players you will face choose bet sizing based on the current size of the pot. That makes raising much more important to increase our likelihood of winning a huge pot or even potentially doubling up here.

Raising could cause us to miss some future potential bluffs from hands like JTs or 53s that might try and fire multiple streets if we allow them to keep betting.

However, raising the flop bet makes it much more likely that the Hijack will commit a large portion of their stack with a hands like ATo/A9o and put us in a very good position to build an early stack in this tournament.

Raising (to around 750) is the best play.